Intro to Bitcoin | Vinny Lingham | TEDxCapeTown

Here Vinny takes us through the creation and design of Bitcoin and explains how its technology and concept can be expanded to influence so much more that just our currencies.

Vinny is a well renowned South Africa technology innovator and founder of multiple startups, most recently Gyft.com which was sold to First Data Corporation in 2014. Vinny is also a prolific Angel investor and Dragon on the TV Show, Dragon's Den South Africa.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at

I see a lot more people today my age(30 and under) using google
wallet/apple pay then a year ago. It urks me because I know the many
advantages bitcoin has over those two, but for a non technical person, its
a familiar interface without the complexity/pain points bitcoin has today.
tho it urks me, its a step in the right direction.﻿

+Ludguallon That is something that changes when people see how much cheaper
Bitcoin transactions are. “What? You don’t get assraped by Visa, the
merchant, AND your bank when you use Bitcoint?”….case closed, new user
made.

Bitcoin is backed by mathematics, open source code, cryptography and the
most powerful and secure decentralized distributed computational network on
the planet, orders of magnitude more powerful than google and government
combined. There is a limit of 21 million bitcoins (divisible in smaller
units). Dollars are not backed by gold anymore since long time ago, they
are printed by the trillions out of nothing by the private institution
called “Federal” Reserve.